Category Archives: Trade and Industry

At present, the European Union (EU) has bilateral and regional trade agreements with the following countries:

Free trade agreements (FTA) with Chile, South Africa, Mexico, and South Korea; as part of the wider European Economic Area

FTAs with Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland;

Negotiations with Central America (El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras and Panama), Andean Nations (comprising Peru and Columbia), and Ukraine have been concluded, and will be ratified in due course.

Furthermore, the Government are supportive of negotiations starting in 2013 with Japan, the
USA, Morocco and Thailand.

In addition, as a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a multilateral trading system for the 157 member countries, the EU is party to both the general agreement on tariffs and trade (GATTS) and general agreement on trade in services (GATS).

The EU also has various other trade agreements with other countries or groups of countries: association agreements (AAs), economic partnership agreements (EPAs), stabilisation and association agreements (SAAs), partnership & co-operation agreements (PCAs) and memberships of the Customs Union.

Chris Williamson, the MP for Derby North is, of course, right that the Royal Mail provides a vital service to homes and businesses. Britain invented the modern Post Office, using the monopoly power of the state to provide a national delivery service at the same price from the Orkneys to Land’s End.

But the impulse for privatisation does not come from the wicked Tories, as he suggests. He should look to EU Directive 97/67/EC “Privatisation of Postal Services” for that. This reduced the Royal Mail’s monopoly and allowed the Dutch and German postal services to cherry pick profitable business, leaving the Royal Mail with the unprofitable parts. Further Directives have followed, requiring the phasing
out of the Royal Mail monopoly by 2009. Norway has just rejected the latest Directive and will keep its own national postal service, just as it has retained its fisheries.

Instructions from the the EU to David Miliband, dated 28 November 2007, leave no doubt that the EU is in charge. He is ordered “The transformation programme will involve …..reducing the size of the Post Office network by around 2,500 branches”.

I was in Central Lobby in 2008 when a petition of over 2 million signatures against Post Office closures had been delivered and Parliament was thronged with thousands of people who had come to see their MPs. I was with three MPs of decidedly independent views and decided to stir things a little.

“How many of your colleagues” I asked “will have told these people “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you here. It’s all controlled by EU Directives now”?” The MPs looked a little awkward and said that they didn’t suppose that anybody had said that. “But it’s true, isn’t it?” I asked and they had to admit it was.

It made me very angry that so many people had wasted their money and taken a day off work to lobby representatives who were powerless to give them any redress but would not admit to it. The hypocrisy of MPs signing this or that petition to save some local Post Office also infuriated me. They must have known it would make no difference to the overall number to be closed.

If Mr. Williamson really wants the Royal Mail to be an effective public, national service for the people of this country, he will have to support a government which will take us out of the EU. His colleagues in the Labour Euro Safeguards Campaign would support him.

Yet again the Government has awarded a major engineering contract to a foreign supplier – in this case to the German conglomerate Siemens when it should have gone to Derbybased train-maker Bombardier. As a direct consequence, over 1,000 jobs have been lost in Derby and the building of railway rolling stock in the area looks set to come to an end after 150 years. This is entirely due to European Union procurement rules and the Government’s failure to stand up for British interests and protect British jobs.

Edward Spalton, national vice-chairman of the crossparty Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIB), comments: “The de-industrialisation of Britain was foreseen as an integral part of the EU project from its earliest days. Time and again, our politicians award major contracts to foreign companies in preference to British ones. We can contrast the deceit and bad faith of Britain’s political class with the devotion to duty of Britain’s navy, army and air force which we so recently celebrated on Armed Forces Day.”

Mr Spalton points out that British soldiers swear an oath to “be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty the Queen … and defend her against all enemies”. Over 350 British military personnel have died in the last few years keeping that oath in Afghanistan. Cabinet Ministers also take an oath when they become members of the Privy Council and swear to “bear faith and allegiance to the Queen’s Majesty; and [to] assist and defend all civil and temporal jurisdictions … granted to Her Majesty and annexed to the Crown … against all foreign princes, persons, prelates, states or potentates and generally in all things you will do as a faithful and true servant ought to do to Her Majesty.”

Mr Spalton says: “Ministers who took this oath made the Queen and all of us into subjects of the European Union, bound to obey dictates of its officials whom we did not elect and cannot dismiss. This is the rottenness at the heart of the state which betrayed the workers at Bombardier and many other firms. The soldiers kept their oaths to defend the sovereignty of the Crown, and so of the country, against all comers. Yet the ministers who give them orders in the Queen’s name do not keep theirs.”

Whose side are ministers on?

Writing in the Derby Telegraph, Mr Spalton explains: “British governments have frequently preferred to give large orders to EU companies rather than to British ones. The army’s biggest ever order for lorries went to MAN Fahrzeuge when there were perfectly suitable British suppliers. They also bought an Austrian armoured vehicle, the Pinzgauer Vector, supposedly to provide extra protection for troops who were being needlessly killed in the Snatch Landrover. The Pinzgauer was withdrawn because it was even more dangerous. The driver sat over a front wheel arch, vulnerable to land mines and explosive devices.

“So Bombardier is in a long line of British companies and workers who have been consistently rejected by British governments in the name of ‘EU rules’. We may well ask: Whose side are they on?”